Sunday, February 14, 2010

Drivers licenses and rurality.

An intuitive conclusion to draw is that people are more dependent on cars in rural areas. According to anecdotes, New York City is one of the few places where it is normal for an adult to not drive.Ah, but what does the data say about this intuitive idea?As usual, it says that this idea is not quite that absolute. There is a trend in that direction, but it is quite outdone by other things. New York and Connecticut are a good example: both are urbanized states, with much of Connecticut laying inside the NYC metro area. And yet there numbers of licensed drivers seems quite heavy.(For whatever reason, Vermont and Alabama have more licensed drivers than they have driving age population, which could be an artifact of keeping their system updated, or could mean there are people who have fraudulent licenses)